Our Lady of Ashes

Faith is the light of the flame of love. Continuing my scattered commentary ( pt 1 here ) on parts from Patmore Coventry's The Rod, the Root, and the Flower . The quote above is from the final section of the book, "Aphorisms and Extracts" added posthumously by Patmore's son. Another of these Extracts sums up well the theme of Coventry's theme: God, in whose image we were made, Let me not be afraid To trace Thy likeness in what best we are. And this nicely sums up what Stratford Caldecott noticed as Prelude thoughts to the Theology of the Body: God has declared to his His mystic rapture in His Marriage with Humanity in twice saying, 'Hic est Filius meus dilectus in quo bene complacui'. [This is my Beloved Son in whom I am well pleased] He expressly and repeatedly calls this marriage, and pronounces the marriage of Man and Woman to be its symbol. This is the burning heart of the Universe . A few more from the first section, "Aurea Dicta...

Coventry Patmore, portrait by John Singer Sargent The Rod, the Root, and the Flower  by Coventry Patmore is a collection of aphorisms expounding the culmination of Patmore's spiritual thought. Patmore is a poet of the the late nineteenth century, a member of the Christian Romantics, poets who found the Romantic movement in and of itself, too bereft of religion, intellect and philosophy, but found inspiration in the Romantics' rejection of the Rationalist philosophy, and their return to allegory, symbolism, and medieval imagery. Patmore was considered a mystic and was popular in his day though that waned after his conversion to Catholocism, which still made someone something of a persona non grata in England. Stratford Caldecott in " Why We Need Coventry Patmore " ( Communio  2014) notes that Patmore's writing is a poetic expression of St John Paul II's Theology of the Body almost a hundred years older than the Pope's groundbreaking exegesis of fa...